In one way or another, we are all storytellers. Be it via jokes retold from childhood and pranks played on our friends, or a bitter experience in our past.
Have you ever had someone remark that their life story would make an interesting book? Most of us think ours would, but unless it is presented as an exciting narrative, it will probably lay on the shelf gathering dust.
Many years ago, I felt the need to let the stories inside my head come out and play. They started escaping the year one of my teachers assigned us 5 pages of what he called “Randon Notes” written in longhand, and submitted every Friday. I decided to have fun tantalizing him with continued stories. I wish I had been able to save them, but alas, they burned along with our homestead shortly after graduation.
I have been able to resist most of the offers of successful authors to pass that wisdom along, at a hefty price to newbies. To be honest, I have signed up for one or two of them and discovered I was doing it all wrong! I was supposed to be writing every line correctly. Unfortunately, most real people talk in the manner of their education and experiences they have faced in their life. I used one program that corrected my style of writing so much that I ceased to exist!
My Husband of 58 years and my illustrator and best Beta Reader remarked one day that my book didn’t sound like me anymore. I was at first a little ticked, didn’t I do everything the program instructed? I decided to read it like I was a reader, not the author, and I realized it was good, but it didn’t sound at all like me. My life experiences give my books a different slant than other authors. I have stopped using that program, so what you read is what you get!
My advice to newbies would be to read everything you can get your face over and pay attention to how they write! Write every day! Have fun letting your mind wander through space and time. You should try to be as grammatically correct as you can, but even the best sellers make mistakes. BTW Grammarly is your friend! Nobody is perfect! Go ahead and self-publish your book, so what if only your relatives buy it! You can feel good about the fact that you did it! There are places to get technical information on how to format your book and upload it. It’s not rocket science, I did it, nuff said!
I have 12 books self-published and working on the 13th, which is a sequel of Murder on Lake Haverly! If you like my stories, do me a favor, review them on Amazon or Barnes and Noble and tell your friends to try them. There are 8 Young Adult books and 4 adult books. Six of the Young Adult books are sequential! Two of them are about my Daughter’s imaginary friends! You can find my books easy by typing Brenda Colbath in the Amazon or Barnes and Noble search bar, and they will pop up, most of the time on one page. Be sure to like and follow me to be notified when a new book is published. Thanks!